Study links SDB to behavioral problems in children

Toddlers who have abnormal breathing during sleep are more likely to develop behavioral problems when they reach school age, researchers say. Sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) comprises a wide spectrum of breathing abnormalities that occur during sleep. The condition usually causes snoring, lack of ventilation and abnormal pauses in breathing which leads to recurrent sleep arousal. Previous findings tied ventilation problems to higher risk of cardiovascular disease. Sleep disruptions can also cause problems such as daytime drowsiness, low concentration and misbehavior. A study, which followed more than 11,000 British children from birth to the age of seven revealed that kids with SDB were 40 to 100 percent more likely to show behavioral problems at age 7. SDB children had 85 percent higher risk of hyperactivity, 60 percent greater risk of “conduct” problems, and 37 percent more likely to have problems relating to other children, researchers wrote in Pediatrics. “This is the strongest evidence to date that snoring, mouth breathing, and apnea [abnormally long pauses in breathing during sleep] can have serious behavioral and social-emotional consequences for children,” said senior researcher Karen Bonuck of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Scientists suggested that poor breathing and lack of oxygen during sleep could cause behavioral problems by affecting rapid brain development in childhood. “Just think about the brain's rapid development in the early years, the need to reset itself at night, and the lack of oxygen and excess carbon dioxide that quite possibly could result from sleep-disordered breathing,” Bonuck explained. “Parents and pediatricians alike should be paying closer attention to sleep-disordered breathing in young children, perhaps as early as the first year of life," she recommended. Bonuck suggested parents who “suspect their child is showing symptoms of sleep-disordered breathing, they should ask their pediatrician or family physician if their child needs to be evaluated by an ear, nose, and throat physician or a sleep specialist.”